Eric R. Claeys is Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He has written widely in the fields of property, private law, and constitutional law. Professor Claeys’s current research interests focus on flourishing- and labor-based natural rights justifications for property—in American property theory, in intellectual property, and in contemporary regulation of shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing. He is a member of the American Law Institute, he serves on the ALI’s Members’ Consultative Group for the first Restatement of Copyright, and he also serves as an adviser to the Restatement (Fourth) of the Law of Property.
Professor Claeys received his JD from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. He received his AB from Princeton University, and he is a former visiting fellow and current member of Princeton’s Politics Department’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. After law school, Professor Claeys clerked for the Hon. Melvin Brunetti, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Hon. William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.
Professor Claeys’s main teaching interests include Property, Torts, Jurisprudence, and Intellectual Property. In recent years, he has also taught Water Law, Remedies, Estates and Trusts, Trade Secrecy, Constitutional Law, Torts, and Oil and Gas law. Spring 2018, he is teaching Torts and Jurisprudence as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.
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McCulloch v. Maryland: A Debate
George Mason Student Chapter
Antonin Scalia Law School3301 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
Originalism and Constitutional Property Rights Jurisprudence
2019 National Lawyers Convention
The Mayflower Hotel1127 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
2019 National Lawyers Convention
Originalism
The Mayflower Hotel1127 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Legal Review: Dobbs and the Holdings of Roe and Casey
Before the Supreme Court this term is the question of whether all pre-viability bans on...
Locke & Montesquieu: The Philosophers Behind the Founders
Short video featuring Paul Carrese, Eric Claeys, Paul Rahe, and Michael Zuckert
Where did the founding ideas of Washington, Madison, and Jefferson find their origins? How did...
Originalism and Constitutional Property Rights Jurisprudence
2019 National Lawyers Convention
On November 16, 2019, the Federalist Society's Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted...
Originalism and Constitutional Property Rights Jurisprudence
2019 National Lawyers Convention
On November 16, 2019, the Federalist Society's Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group hosted...
Are Property Rights Protected Under the Constitution?
NLC Convention Panel: Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group
At this year’s National Lawyer’s Convention, the Property and Environmental Law Practice Group is hosting...

Regulatory Takings
What is a regulatory taking? This unit in the No. 86 course explores how the Takings Clause applies to disputes between property owners and regulators imposing...